Carsten Mayrhofer
'Carsten Mayrhofer '(30 January 1939 - 28 March 2000) was an Austrian former racing driver and journalist, who spent 3 seasons racing in the Formula One World Championship. From 1979 to 1984 he worked on Austria's national radio and television as a Formula One commentator, pundit and journalist, and is considered one of the main contributors to F1 journalist and his son-in-law, Claude Bourdon's international success. Early life Not much is known about Carsten's early life, not even his birth town. The earliest known information is his early racing successes across Germany in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including winning Germany's junior karting competition in 1955. Formula One Career Mayrhofer was announced as Adidas' only driver for the 1962 season as a slight surprise, not many people were expecting to see him in F1 as he was majorly unknown everywhere except Germany at that point. His first season didn't go too well, he finished without a single point, his highest race finish being an 8th place. Adidas retained him for 2 more years at the end of the season though, as he was relatively cheap and didn't complain. The following season, 1963, turned out to be his career best, as he actually scored his only career point in the 1963 French GP. He still only finished 18th in the championship, due to there being a large amount of competitive drivers in better teams that year, but Mayrhofer considered finishing tied on points with Carlsberg's Andrew Smith, a former champion, a massive success. 1964 wasn't as successful, the Adidas car was faster when compared to last season's, but the rest of the grid managed to develop even further so Adidas was actually left behind. Mayrhofer couldn't do much, this was easily his worst career season, and his highest race finish was 9th, only better than Bentley's Liam Dwan... and then an incident happened in the penultimate race. Mayrhofer was directly involved in a collision with Guido Lauto, which led to the Italian superstar remaining comatose, and Mayrhofer being so broken that he announced immediate retirement, aged only 25. He said he'd never be able to return to racing after being the cause of this horrible accident. Life after racing He decided to fully retire from public life after his racing retirement in 1964, which lined up with the birth of his second daughter. For the following 15 years, he was barely seen anywhere, basically completely living in the shadows, nobody had heard of him and he was forgotten even in his homeland. In 1979 however, cooperating with his elder daughter's boyfriend and later husband, he returned to the public eye and was soon invited to work for Austria's TV as an F1 commentator and pundit. Breakdown and death His wife Sabine passed away suddenly from an illness kept secret from the public in 1984, aged only 43. This led to Mayrhofer suffering a mental breakdown and going on a shooting rampage in the building of the Austrian TV. Afterwards, he spent 2 months in hospital, and since 1985 he completely retired from the eye of the public and lived in Germany with his aforementioned daughter and her husband, taking heavy medication for the rest of his life. Stress, grief and heavy medication caused him to develop big health issues, resulting in his early death in 2000, aged only 61. He was survived by two daughters and four grandchildren.